B.C., Winnipeg get new football digs, but about that rapid transit -- don't ask

BC Place

Original construction: 1983, as a prelude to Expo ’86, in a former brownfield on east side of downtown.

Roof collapse: 2007

Replacement/revitalization debate: 2003-2009.

Revitalization tab: $563 million, in two phases.

Phase One (2008-2009): Before the 2010 Olympics, BC Place built new public plazas, access ramps, washrooms, concessions, media facilities, viewing areas for people with disabilities and replaced some of the signage and lighting.

Phase Two (2010-2011): After the Olympics, the venue replaced its air-supported dome roof with a retractable cover and replaced the no-longer-needed airlocks with new entrances.

It also replaced brown glass with clear glazing to allow more light in and installed new seats, artificial turf, viewing screens, graphics, sound and lighting systems and WiFi. Seating capacity before renovation: 57,500.

Current seating capacity: 52,900.

Opening date: Sept. 30, 2011.

Stadium owner: B.C. Pavilion Corp., or Pavco, a provincial Crown corporation that also owns and operates the Vancouver Convention Centre. Revitalization financing: Province of British Columbia and Pavco.

Rapid transit service: Skytrain Expo Line.

Winnipeg stadiums

Winnipeg Stadium construction: 1953 near Polo Park, as a reaction to demand for seats at Osborne Stadium, where Great-West Life now stands.

New stadium: 33,422-seat outdoor stadium at University of Manitoba, for use by Winnipeg Football Club and U of M Bisons, with covering for 80 per cent of stands, a wrap-around concession area with a view of the field and a playing surface below grade. Stadium has 46 private boxes and has the capacity to be expanded to 40,000 seats for events such as the Grey Cup. Also has Winnipeg Blue Bombers Hall of Fame, training facilities for the Bombers and the Bisons and offices for the Winnipeg Football Club.

Projected opening: June 2012.

Stadium ownership: A new non-profit organiza­tion owns the stadium, which is operated by the Winnipeg Football Club.

New stadium financing: Province of Manitoba, Winnipeg Football Club, City of Winnipeg. Ottawa committed funds for recreation improvements at U of M.

Columns

VANCOUVER -- As long-suffering Winnipeg football fans obsess about what will happen on the turf at BC Place this Sunday, it's worth a nanosecond to take a step back and think about the venue itself.

The battle between the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and the B.C. Lions for the 99th Grey Cup will take place inside a 28-year-old stadium that just underwent a three-year renovation at a cost of $563 million, all of it underwritten by the taxpayers of British Columbia.

Back in 2003, after Vancouver and Whistler landed the 2010 Olympics, there were calls to demolish BC Place, which some residents considered an eyesore on the False Creek waterfront. They argued it was time to build a new stadium somewhere else.

Bolstering the pro-demolition side, developers claimed the stadium site could fetch more than $1 billion on the open market, given the scarcity of commercial real estate in Vancouver.

On the anti-demolition side was a projected price tag of more than $1 billion to build a new covered multi-use facility, when the cost of acquiring land in the very same hot real estate market was taken into account.

Demolition also would have come with environmental costs, as the prospect of tossing a stadium-sized pile of concrete into West Coast landfills was not exactly popular in sustainability-minded British Columbia.

In a debate that will seem awfully familiar to Winnipeggers, who only recently emerged from an insufferable stadium saga of their own, Vancouver took the better part of six years to figure out what to do with BC Place.

As the 2010 winter games drew near, BC Place's owner, the provincial Crown corporation Pavco, decided to go with an ambitious renovation and refurbishment project.

"At the end of the day, we needed the facility for the Olympics and needed upgrades anyway," said Howard Crosley, BC Place's general manager.

"The unfortunate part of it was, the decision didn't come soon enough for the actual Olympics."

Looking at BC Place right now, there's not much that seems unfortunate about the decision to hold on to a structure originally built to serve Expo '86.

The two-stage renovation of the venue started before the Olympics with almost $50 million worth of improvements to ramps, washrooms, concessions and other facilities.

Then came the truly expensive task of ending BC Place's status as the largest air-supported structure on the planet.

The most visible aspect of the renovation was the replacement of the venue's inflatable dome, which ripped open during a gust of wind in January 2007. The stadium now has a retractable roof that can open or close in 20 minutes.

No more dome also meant no more need for the ugly airlocks at entrances that now have more spacious doors.

The renovation also involved new turf, new screens, new speakers and new seats with brand-new colours. Fortuitously for the home side this weekend, there's no longer any blue in the stands.

The venue also has new glass to allow in more natural light, new lighting on the exterior and a facade that casts a more modern figure on the architectural landscape.

Since the venue opened on Sept. 30 -- approximately a month ahead of schedule -- the fan reaction has been positive, Crosley surmises.

Even more importantly, if you've just spent half a billion dollars, the concert and event-promotion industry has responded even more positively. BC Place is booked for 231 dates in 2012, only a fraction of them for the CFL Lions and MLS Vancouver Whitecaps. The rest of the dates belong to the likes of concerts and conventions.

As the Winnipeg Football Club completes an $190-million outdoor stadium at the University of Manitoba, there are not that many lessons it can draw directly from the renovation BC Place.

But the BC Place experience is instructive when it comes to where the B.C. Lions were forced to play while their regular home was under construction: Empire Field, located at the Pacific National Exhibition site, approximately six kilometres east of downtown.

"When we built the temporary stadium for a year-and-a-half, we learned how important it was to have transportation infrastructure," Crosley says. "Even though PNE had lots of parking, not having access to SkyTrain (Vancouver's rapid-transit network) and all the bus routes made it more difficult for people to come and go from the stadium."

In short, the semi-suburban location was a transportation headache, without rapid transit in a city that relies on it.

While Winnipeg is nowhere near as congested as Vancouver, the earliest this city will extend the Southwest Rapid Transit Corridor to the new U of M stadium is 2016, four years after the venue is set to open.

BC Place has its own SkyTrain stop. If you're a Bomber fan, try not to think of that when you watch this Sunday's game.

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